HOW FINANCIAL ORGANIZATIONS CAN PROTECT THEIR DATA

Yuval Wollman, President, CyberProof and Chief Cyber Officer, UST

 

Top executives from Wall Street’s largest banks pinpointed cybersecurity as the greatest threat to America’s financial system, at a Congressional hearing that took place in May.

The concern of financial industry leaders with cyber-attacks is neither surprising, nor new. The attraction of cybercriminals to banks and other financial institutions makes sense, given the fact that the financial sector functions as gatekeepers – not just of financial assets, but also of valuable Personally identifiable information (PII).

Threat actors are attracted to attack financial institutions to earn a profit through increasingly sophisticated attacks that range from ransomware attacks to identity theft. But while the threat continues to grow, there is much that can be done to mitigate the risks.

 

The Downsides of Digital Banking

The number of attacks on financial institutions increased sharply in the last two years due to the upheavals wrought by COVID-19, which prompted a dramatic rise in the number of online transactions.

With so much of today’s financial transactions done on both web and mobile devices, threat actors have more opportunities than ever before. Take, for example, the growing importance of Man in the Middle (MITM) Attacks, which impersonate another party online and give criminals access to personal data, passwords, and banking details.

With the widespread adoption of digital banking, consumers have become increasingly worried about cyber-attack. As a result, there’s growing demand to create better consumer protection laws that respond to the rapidly evolving technology. The U.S. Federal Trade Commission (FTC), for example, recently strengthened security safeguards for consumer financial information.

 

It’s Not “Just” About the Money

Financial organizations are at risk not just from threat actors looking for profit, but also from nation-states and hacktivists acting out of idealistic motives or as a means of achieving specific political ends.

The most famous examples of this type of attack include Russia’s 2016 attack on Ukraine’s electric grid and North Korea’s 2017 attack on Britain’s National Health Service.

Because of the extent of the damage that this type of attack could cause, NATO established cyberspace as the “fifth domain of warfare” in 2016. It developed a definition of when foreign factions are banned from attacking financial institutions, due to the fear that this type of attack could directly lead to a country’s destabilization.

 

Recognizing Risk Factors

The digital transformation of financial services helps banks and other financial institutions provide more a more convenient customer experience.

And while significant customer demand has led many banks to implement changes such as the transition from legacy to cloud-based solutions, these shifts also have the potential to create additional security risks.

For example, if we’re talking specifically about cloud migration, there’s need for additional security layers to protect organizations working with public cloud providers from the range of attacks targeting the financial sector: ransomware, account takeover, data theft and manipulation, phishing attacks, identity theft, and more.

Another example is the extensive use of third-party vendors, which has increased the risk of attack for organizations in the financial sector. Because third-party vendors enlarge the attack surface, they create more entry points to the system and make it harder to protect customer data.

 

Accelerating Detection & Response

By adopting an agile approach that supports continuous improvement, financial organizations can facilitate proactive identification of evolving threats and vulnerabilities in the wild. More specifically, by placing an emphasis on use case optimization – which starts by mapping out an organization’s threat detection gaps to a framework such as MITRE ATT&CK – enterprises can prioritize threats and invest their time and resources in mitigating risk more effectively.

For organizations transitioning to the cloud, what’s key is managing the migration process in a way that provides optimal visibility in the cloud and supports ongoing optimization at the enterprise level. Digital playbooks are a crucial tool in providing improved detection and response, creating automated or guided responses that allow faster, more effective, collaborative action.

The development and regular review of incident response plans similarly allows for efficient response in emergency situations and helps reduce the business impact of cyber-attacks.

 

Targeted Threat Intelligence

Threat intelligence that’s tailored to the financial services sector is another key component of timely detection and response. By working with expert Cyber Threat Intelligence (CTI) services, organizations can obtain up-to-date information about industry-specific threats in real time – information that is a highly valuable tool in strengthening the defense of an enterprise.

 

Cyber Hygiene

Employees make mistakes; after all, it’s only human. But these errors can lead to massive data breaches. For example, when someone clicks on a phishing email or leaves passwords for a company computer on a slip of paper that’s easily seen by the wrong person, the damage can be astronomical.

Providing regular cybersecurity training programs for employees can help minimize the risk of an accidental or careless action leading to cyber-attack. To be effective, training programs should not only explain how to spot cybersecurity risks like phishing emails but should also discuss how and where it’s safe to access company information.

Aside from employee training, there are fundamental cybersecurity-related decisions that should be implemented at the enterprise level such as Zero Trust, DevSecOps, and multi-factor authentication (MFA). From a policy perspective, for example, it’s crucial to enforce MFA for all applications. Moreover, technology-related vulnerabilities can be minimized through frequent patching and updates for systems. Audits, as well as vulnerability and penetration tests, must be conducted regularly.

 

For the Financial Sector, “Best Practices” are Key

With the growth in number and complexity of cybersecurity attacks on financial organizations and the increased risk of nation-state attacks, proactively approaching the question of cybersecurity and implementing “best practices” makes the difference in reducing the degree of risk to an enterprise.

By modernizing the SOC with a carefully navigated migration to the cloud, adopting continuous improvement of use cases and the development of digital playbooks that improve detection and response – as well as by leveraging targeted threat intelligence and maintaining strong cyber hygiene – enterprises can put themselves in a stronger position to minimize the potential business impact of a cyber-attack on their organizations.

 

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